Unbelievably bad landlord

Paulus1962

A long story spanning several years, hopefully someone will be able to assist with my questions at the end.

At the commencement of the tenancy there was no inventory completed which detailed the condition of the property. However, after approximately five or six weeks of having been in residence an inventory was completed detailing the property that belonged to the Landlord and the condition of the same. Regrettably, we were not provided with a copy of the inventory. The boiler in the property ceased working in 2005. The only documentation available to confirm this is a copy of the gas safety inspection dated 19/04/06 in which it is stated that the boiler had not been working for approximately one year and the recommendation that the boiler be replaced as it had failed the gas safety inspection. Up until the vacation of the property on 12th November 2009, the boiler continues to remain unrepaired/replaced despite environmental health detailing the fault in a letter dated 25th March 2009.

Initially, heating was provided by the use of electric fan heaters purchased by ourselves, but this was an extremely expensive and inefficient way of heating the whole house. In 2007 I applied for a loan from the social fund which was granted and used to purchase a coal stove. This provided heating for the lounge only, although some residual convected heat rose to the first floor to take the worst of the coldness away from the middle and front bedrooms.

The boiler also provided hot water and, for the first few months from when it ceased to work we were able to use the immersion heater in the water tank (located in the rear bedroom) to continue providing hot water for bathing. However, as the immersion was not designed for continuous use, it consistently failed leading to numerous replacements at our expense. The immersion finally ‘gave up the ghost’ and we were left without an adequate hot water supply. Bathing was achieved by boiling kettles of water and filling a large bucket situated in the bath. It was not practical to fill the bath in this fashion as it took several hours to provide sufficient water to make it feasible.

There have been many other problems with the property, ceilings collapsing, kitchens flooding when it rains, dampness, mould, draughts from poorly fitted doors and windows. It seems never ending.

My questions are these:

1. can the landlord keep any of our deposit for the mould which has come about due to there being insufficient heating in the property.

2. Can the landlord keep any of our deposit for the poor condition of the carpet? It is over twenty years old, has substantial soiling in heavy traffic areas such as the kitchen that floods. We did try cleaning it, but it was hopeless.

3. Do you have any other advice? We ARE taking the Landlord to court over the property (and probably the deposit that we are reasonably certain he will try to keep).

tek-monkey

Why were you there so long?

Fire_Fox

Mould isn't usually due to insufficient heating it tends to be due to a combination of tenant's lifestyle and insufficient ventilation (and perhaps the flooding): heating only holds water in the air it doesn't remove it from the property. I'm with Tek-monkey I can't understand why you tolerated the situation so long, why you paid to repair the immersion ... did you put any of your complaints into writing to the landlord, sending the letters by recorded delivery?

Paulus1962

The simple answer is that we could not afford to go anywhere else. I developed some health problems that precluded me from working so money became very tight. Strangely, it is those same problems that actually made it possible to move in the end as it transpired that the mould and damp were having a detrimental affect on my health and making my conditions worse more quickly than under normal circumstances.

Paulus1962

Firefox, the mould is on all exteral walls at the rear of the property. Ventilation was never an issue, with louvre windows that didn't keep out any draughts, external doors with huge gaps all around that were not overly effective, and a cellar that could act as an indoor swimming pool. It was like living in a wind tunnel. I cannot even say it was down to drying clothes as the radiators didn't work and our drier is a condenser model.

Paulus1962

Following from the boiler failing the gas safety inspection, two people came around to quote for the replacement heating system. Nothing more was heard from either. The following year during the gas safety inspection the engineer was instructed to cap the gas supply. After the matter was reported to environmental health an electrician (supposedly qualified) came to the property and replaced the consumer board that didn't have a fault, I know this because I had paid someone to install it (and EDF came and replaced all the boxes for the mains supply into the house at my request, these being the items that tended to catch on fire and were responsible for the second floor in the kitchen being destroyed). They also removed some wall sockets and replaced one with an extension lead. They left bare wires cut off and exposed and damaged the wall tiles at every point where they removed things. They also replaced the extractor fan in the bathroom, which seemed pretty pointless as there was no hot water or heating. The ducting they used to enclose the cables was slightly too long, so instead of cutting it off with a saw, they made a hole in the ceiling and pushed it up into it. Not exactly a professional level of work.

Several weeks after that, a gas engineer did turn up. He came with the wrong type of boiler, no copper pipe to plumb it in, no flue to vent the fumes, no radiators (they all have problems ranging from split seams to not actually being attached to the walls). He was also instructed to put a heated towel rail radiator in the bathroom which it turned out was longer that the available wall space for its installation.

I believe the intention was always to get us to leave one way or another. They had no grounds to evict us, so this was the only other option available to them.

PasturesNew

Paulus1962 wrote: »

They had no grounds to evict us, so this was the only other option available to them.

They wouldn't have needed grounds. Just a simple Section 21 giving you two months notice is all any landlord needs to give.

Paulus1962

In actual fact a section 21 notice could not be issued by the landlord. If I chose to force the issue by going to court, the landlord would have to produce a copy of the original AST for the benefit of the court. This they cannot do! They are not the first landlord of this property, and somewhere along the line, they managed to lose the original agreement (along with the inventory as well). Hence, they were unable to issue a section 21 notice.

Paulus1962

I have had continuous contact with the landlord, but the first representative of his company to appear (other than the inventory clerk and the regular gas inspections) was not until after I had contacted the environmental health.

charliee_3

sounds like you have had a miserable time, i really hope your new place is better.. would be hard to find somewhere worse.. in answer to your questions i would say no he cant keep your deposit for the mould or the carpet as there was no inventory to state that either of them werent in that condition when you moved in, though i have a feeling he will be one of these landlords who assume that the deposit is theirs to keep, exactly the sort of ones who the DPS was set up to protect tenants from- shame you took up the tenancy pre-DPS days..

Good luck taking them to court, I hope you win.. i also hope that the next people he gets in are the tenants from hell.. couldn't happen to a nicer person IMO..

Paulus1962

Yes, we do have somewhere better now. A very large three bedroom house that has been newly built specifically for people with disabilities. We have double glazing, central heating, hot water (provided by solar panels), a garden that is about 15 times larger than we had previously (hell, the front garden is five times bigger than the garden we had previously). We are now in a much nicer area where we don't have the police attending two or three times a night to deal with drunkards, racists or vandals. But just because things have worked out for us in the long run that is no reason to allow our former landlord to get away with his errant ways.